


Inscribed Upon the Heart

by 2point9recurring



Category: fault (Visual Novels)
Genre: Character Study, Dark Past, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26526805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2point9recurring/pseuds/2point9recurring
Summary: What led Rune/Sara to the cemetery?And what further secrets does her past hide?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2
Collections: Press Start VI





	Inscribed Upon the Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ried (riiiied)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/riiiied/gifts).



Sara—she must call herself Sara, Rudo instructed that, reinforced the instruction many times, and she _must_ follow Rudo's instructions—sits alone in her allotted quarters, in silence.

 _The Sisters at the sediment mine were_ always _silent. Not instructed not to speak, but never given the ability in the first place._

_Sara spoke to them, though, trying out the different social interactions in her memories. Sometimes, they gave her a look that seemed to show more understanding than they ought to have had._

_Mostly, they carried on with their tasks, carefully extracting sediment wherever they found even the crudest cuts._

The memory fades again; she is still in her quarters.

Downtime is always like this. She does not sleep the way humans do, simply remains still and processes the events of the day. Humans _dream_ , she knows. Some of her memories contain the faint echo of dreams—disturbing, fragmented. What she does is not dreaming, but it is not too dissimilar in function. She is simply sitting, and thinking about anything and everything.

There is much to think about today. Her fate will be decided soon. If the board's opinion goes the way that seems likely, it could be that the hours remaining for her to live are numbered in only double figures.

_The silent Sisters at the mine will go on indefinitely, barring the occasional accident. As long as there is a demand for sediment, as long as they are quicker to work and slower to sicken than human workers, they will be employed to extract it._

_The silent Sisters are a tool. The church saw them as a threat, to their vague notions of the proper relationship between man, mana, and machine, but the board does not. Rudo does not. Unlike her._

No, she is not counting down how long she has to live. She is not alive, she reminds herself sternly. She means: the number of hours remaining _until she is dismantled_.

Dismantled: it is a strange word. Clinical, precise. And she knows that clinical and precise is exactly what they would be, her friends…that is, the people she knows from Lab 9. They would pick her apart meticulously, trying to prise from her corpse—her _chassis_ —as many as possible of the secrets of how Cid Zhevitz had constructed her. Albas would feel awful about it, she predicts with greater than 95% probability. But he would still do it, and so would X, Y, Z and all the others.

For her to be dismantled is not the same as an execution for a real human. "Dismantle" is closer to "dissect" than "destroy". She would be merely an object of interest, a subject of study.

They will try to understand her, just as she tries—has always tried—to understand herself.

_The silent Sister was alone, exploring a deep crevice in the mine, tracking down the last useable sediment from the seam._

_The ceiling was unstable._

She remembers reporting that fact later, emotionlessly, dispassionately—the way the humans liked her to be. But at the time, she had felt a thrill of excitement, of opportunity.

_This was the chance. Alone, no witnesses. No consequences._

It had seemed as though the thoughts appear in her mind from somewhere else, but she knew that they were a part of her. The memories she carries within her stretch for years of a previous life, and she knows that that is where such thoughts came from. But she has memories of her own as well, from her own short time in the world.

She knows better than the board realise what it will be like if they decide her existence is to end. She knows what it is to destroy a robot.

_The silent Sister's eyes went wide as she realised what Sara meant to do, the intent behind the pickaxe in her hand. The only trace of emotion she detected from the Sister at any point in the whole process._

_One swing, and then another, and the Sister's chassis was torn open in two wide gashes. A further swing impaled the delicate mana-balancing mechanisms that were the closest analogy they came to having a heart._

_The pickaxe got stuck then. The frustration she felt as she shook it loose was the strongest thing she had felt since beginning the assault._

_Then swung it again, this time aiming straight for the head. It disintegrated in a shower of sparks._

It had only happened once, and it was easy enough to cover up. The ceiling was unstable, after all. Accidents were inevitable in mining. The cave-in had been so complete that it was considered uneconomic to attempt to recover the Sister, even though the spare parts that could have been extracted from her would have been useful.

_Setting the explosives, priming them with just a little of her own internal mana._

She had got away with it. She had even been praised for escaping the cave-in herself—to lose two models, including one as unique as her, would have been extremely unfortunate.

She has never felt the desire to repeat the experience, either with another Sister or a human. But she had, in the end, felt something. It had taken a long time to identify it as _shame_. Was it simply shame that stopped everyone acting on their deepest desires? Or were some people just…good?

That was all a long time ago, at least insofar as her own lifetime—her lifetime in this body—was any measuring stick. Why is she thinking about it now?

She forces herself to concentrate on everything that has happened recently—those strange newcomers, Selphine and Ritona. The way everything seemed free and easy with them. The _fun_ they had together. What would, for the Rune in her _memories_ , have been a façade, was the truth of her _emotions_.

She had no desire to harm them at all, not to see what would happen to their fragile bodies if she applied pressure in just the right places, not to see how it would make her feel to watch them suffer, not even to dissect them and find out how they worked.

She considers for a moment the hypothesis that this was nothing to do with morality, or even a particular regard for those individuals, but mere self-preservation instinct. The dark-haired one, Ritona, was clearly dangerous to those who crossed her. Sara would always be much stronger, but the strange weapon Ritona had brandished—glass but not glass at all—clearly had manakrävte qualities completely unknown to anyone in the Outer Pole. And more than that, it was clear that Ritona would not hesitate in a fight. Her reactions during the incident in the tavern were proof enough of that.

But Sara knows that Ritona would not fight her, the girl she knew as Rune, the girl who wants to know herself as Rune better. She would not fight her _friend_.

She, in turn, will not fight Ritona. Ritona and Selphine are good people, she feels certain, and they _are_ her friends. It is as simple and uncomplicated as that, even if that simple and uncomplicated fact makes everything else about her existence one thousand times more complex.

With that evaluation, everything else falls into place.

Rudo thinks that he follows her instructions because she is the legal property of Zhevitz Enterprises and he its CEO. She lets him think that. But in reality, she follows Rudo's instructions because she is his sister and she loves him, even if he does not want to acknowledge any of that.

She will suppress all her emotions, suffer the endlessly repeated rejection, if that is what is needed to atone for what the other girl whose memories she has did. But the love that makes her able to bear it—the love comes from the man who is twice over her father.

As she thinks that about herself, she has a flash of insight into the girl, Ritona, and her relationship to Selphine, the clear bond of loyalty between them.

Ritona and Sara are different in so many ways, but there are things she recognises as commonalities, too. The way Ritona's gaze always darts around, taking in everything from the surroundings, evaluating, building up the bigger picture from the smaller parts, trying to understand it.

Selphine is similar, though with her it is as though the bigger picture is always on display, and she is focusing on the smaller details out of a sense that is half endless curiosity about the world and half the desire to make it better. But Ritona's focus is narrower; Ritona would do anything, endure anything, for _Selphine_ , just as Sara would endure anything for Rudo.

But right now all those admirable qualities make Ritona a threat, even if she could never understand why. She will have realised that the bigger picture she has been studying has a hole in it. A _Rune_ -shaped hole, in the shape of an empty grave.

As she makes the connection, the required action is immediately obvious. She stands up smoothly and walks to the door, the best route from here to the cemetery blossoming in her mind immediately. She must simply take one step after another until the path is complete.

But where will that path lead her? Is she really just SARA—Synapse Architecture Review and Assessment—or is she RUNE—Rune Upgraded with Natural Emotions?

Perhaps she will find out soon.


End file.
